An astonishing Picasso at the Cité du Vin in Bordeaux

• The exhibition "Picasso, The Effervescence of Forms" brings together 80 works by the Spanish artist and some of his contemporaries, on loan in particular from the Picasso museums in Paris and Barcelona.

• "Wine represents many things for Picasso, it is first of all a pleasure of life, and a symbol" affirms the curator of the exhibition Stéphane Guégan.

• Often confined to cubism, Picasso was an abundant artist, and the exhibition shows the stylistic diversity of the artist who marked the 20th century.

Pablo Picasso as you may have never seen him.

The Cité du Vin de Bordeaux (finally) presents its Picasso exhibition

, which was to accompany the fifth anniversary of the Foundation for Wine Culture and Civilizations, and which has been postponed due to Covid-19.

With notably works from the Picasso museums in Paris and Barcelona, ​​it took three years for the Cité du Vin to prepare this exhibition, which brings together a total of 80 works by the Spanish artist and some of his contemporaries.

“The question we asked ourselves is: how to talk about Picasso, this prolific artist who benefits from a huge number of exhibitions each year?

explains Marion Eybert, head of museum projects at the Cité du Vin.

“We had to find a subject, and we were convinced that the popular wine and spirits in the artist's work was one of them.

»

An abundant work marked by stylistic diversity

Yet Picasso is credited with a reputation for Spartan sobriety.

The scientific curator of the exhibition, the historian and art critic Stéphane Guégan, is not so affirmative: “The time of the meal was sacred for Picasso, and he never completely gave up drinking.

Be that as it may, “wine represents many things for Picasso, it is above all a pleasure in life, and a symbol.

This is how, from the start of the exhibition, we must look at his

, a ceramic made in 1948 in the Vallauris studio.

"It's a symbolic object loaded with meaning," insists Stéphane Guégan.

This ball refers to the earth, to the cosmos, and Picasso is a connected artist, he believes in the interferences between nature and creation.

»

Starting the exhibition with a ceramic is not neutral, the purpose of the exhibition is also to show all the facets of the artist, who is often confined to cubism.

However, Picasso left an abundant work marked by stylistic diversity with more classical paintings, drawings, prints, sculptures and even ceramics, therefore.

Sacred symbol and café atmosphere

Wine appears in his first works as a sacred symbol, a Catholic heritage.

"It also allows us to show what the art of a teenager looks like in the mid-1890s, when he learned to paint under the authority of his father, and multiplied the drawings and sketches" explains the curator of the exhibition.

If glasses and bottles are a material very present in the work of the Spanish artist, the theme of wine and alcohol is also approached through the atmosphere of the cafes, which dominate the production of Picasso during his period. blue, as shown by

(1900-1901), a work on loan from the Picasso Museum in Paris, and whose style is reminiscent of Degas, Toulouse-Lautrec or Van Gogh, artists whom Picasso admired.

"One might think with this tricolor atmosphere that we are in a Parisian café, but we are indeed in Spain, in these cafés he frequented, of which he translates the light, the human warmth" underlines Stéphane Guégan.

Cubism and homage to Antiquity

Picasso embarked on cubism from 1906. "Obviously we had to give a place to cubism in the exhibition, by showing how the iconography of wine was a major theme of this movement" continues Stéphane Guégan.

From the end of the 1920s and the 1930s, Picasso revisited Antiquity.

"One of the works that best illustrates it is the "Suite Vollard" which includes more than a hundred engravings, with in particular the presence of the minotaur and his taste for drink.

He then returns to the line, and enters into the iconography that he likes, and that which he supposes to be the most revealing of the heritage of the Greeks.

» Part of the Vollard Suite is presented at the Cité du Vin.

In other works, Picasso also pays homage to Bacchus and the bacchanalia.

The course of the exhibition, oriented towards the general public and which can be done in less than two hours, is both chronological and thematic.

A guided tour for 8-12 year olds is also organized every Saturday and Sunday, and public holidays, at 4 p.m.

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